Off topic here, but this stood out:

As so often happens, OP-20-G won the bureaucratic war: Rochefort embarrassed them by proving them wrong, and they kicked him out of Hawaii, assigning him to a floating drydock.

Similarly:

Joe Coder found a way to automate his data entry job, increasing output and reliability by an order of magnitude. When he tells management about that, he becomes chastised for not following procedure. The IT department then devised "another" procedure which somehow uses Joe Coder's scripts.

More generally,

Low Status disagrees with High Statuses, with proof. High Statuses punish (or evict) him.

I'm probably not cynic enough, but this I do not understand. High Statuses may be afraid, but how come they're so stupid? Surely High Statuses can make better uses of Low Status?